Billy Bob Thornton stars as a farmer named Farmer that has a dream of making it into space on his homemade rocket. The government comes calling when he tries to buy 10,000 pounds of rocket fuel and threatens to sabotage his dream.
What the back of the box says:
10,000 pounds of rocket fuel alone can't lift Charlie into the heavens. He needs a launch/recovery crew, and he has one of the best: his wife (Virginia Madsen) and children, dreamers all. They have liftoff. Our spirits have uplift. Gravity cannot hold down our dreams. The Astronaut Farmer is that kind of movie.”
The world is full of dreamers, but none of them have as large an order as the one that Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) has. He had to leave the space program to return home and save the family farm when his father died. Since then he’s nursed the dream of going into space. So he decides to fulfill the dream on his own and begins constructing a rocket ship in his barn. When he starts seeking the 10,000 pounds of rocket fuel he needs to blast into space, the government comes calling thinking that they’ve got a terrorist on their hands.
Dreams are not cheap and Charlie has mortgaged the farm to the hilt and is also facing ruin since the bank is planning to foreclose. What is somewhat disturbing is that Charlie seems to be forsaking the financial stability of his family to pursue his dream of making it into space. However, this is a really more like a fable of a dreamer and thinking about the “real” things that would cause a real person to not be able to make their dream reality.
These realities are present in the film, but you just know that Charlie will overcome them and in the end we’ll get a happy ending. This is a movie about one such dreamer and to think too much about the real life difficulties will only take the dream out of the gentle fable that the Polish brothers unfold before us. Although it is truly hard to put the fact that Charlie has put the farm into so much debt that it’s loss is imminent only to fulfill his dream of space travel.
The film harkens back to a time when the screen was full of characters that with just their determination made their dreams come true. However, in our trying times I can imagine that such characters are looked upon with a degree of nostalgia but also with some disdain. I happened to enjoy that the film was somewhat of a throwback, but I also have a liking for those films of time past.
So the rule of thumb may be to just think of it as a film and keep an eye out for that happy ending. The film also features Bruce Willis in an uncredited cameo as Charlie’s old NASA buddy.
The Astronaut Farmer is presented on a dual-sided flipper disc with a fullscreen version on one side and an anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) enhanced for 16x9 televisions on the other side.
Special features include the 28 minute “How to Build a Rocket: The Making of Astronaut Farmer” which interviews director/producer/writer Michael Polish, writer/producer/actor Mark Polish, Tim Blake Nelson, Jon Gries, Virginia Madsen, Bruce Dern, producer Len Amato, Billy Bob Thornton, Max Thierot, producer Paula Weinstein, first assistant director Andrew Coffing, production sound mixer Matt Nicolay, costume designer Danny Glicker, production designer Clark Hunter, and composer Stuart Matthewman. Next are 8 minutes of blooper and outtakes and the 2-minute “Conversation with David Scott – NASA Astronaut.”
I thought the Astronaut Farmer had a certain charm, but think that it also needs to be looked at as a movie and put some of the harsh realities in the back of your mind. If you let those realities intrude too much into your mind then you’ll end up not being entertained.
The Astronaut Farmer is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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